My First KohaCon

During theHackfest portion of this year’s Koha Conference, we’ve had all kinds of great sessions, including an introduction to using the sandboxes for bug testing. Being a migration specialist with ByWater means that I don’t spend as much time as a developer would working with these bugs, but that is all about to change. There’s really no need to fear getting involved.

One of the beauties of this community is that all involvement is welcome. Think of the nature of open source, it’s all about sharing with one another and benefitting from that, right? You may wonder how to plug in, or whether or not your skills could be used to contribute. Chris Cormack, in other words, stated during his presentation “Everyone was a newbie once!”. Find bugs, test bugs, help with language translation, spread the word, share your experience – all of these apply!

This was my first KohaCon ever, and I’m filled to the brim with enthusiasm. Now I’ve met, face-to-face, so many of the people that I’ve only met virtually! I’ve heard some of the most interesting uses of Koha here. One librarian presented her library’s costume collection cataloged in Koha, including the library’smethod of storing photographs of the items. Many have also shared screen shots of search results performed on their legacy ILS system and how these have improved since their migration.

I say all this to describe the fascinating nature of the community. We welcome any questions you may have as you get started!